


with open arms and with open doors

by Maria_Antonina



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Non-Graphic Description of Injury, no beta we die like Glenn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23018980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maria_Antonina/pseuds/Maria_Antonina
Summary: “I’m not going to die the second you’re not watching my back,” he bit out, patience thoroughly frayed. “I can take care of myself!”“Of course,” Linhardt said in that mild, disinterested tone he used when he was angry. “I forget that the Goddess, in her infinite wisdom, made you immortal, as well as indestructible.”Caspar and Linhardt don't talk about their feelings. Until they do.
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Linhardt von Hevring
Comments: 8
Kudos: 143





	with open arms and with open doors

Caspar would be the first to admit he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. He didn’t mind; he hasn’t minded in a long time, now. Not since a tall, lanky kid found him crying behind the stables at his parents’ summer estate, after his brother and all his friends made a particularly cruel jest at Caspar’s expense, and asked: _why would you care what they think?_

Still, he wasn’t as complete a fool as most would have him for. So when Linhardt treated him like one, it stung.

“I’m not going to die the second you’re not watching my back,” he bit out, patience thoroughly frayed. “I can take care of myself!”

Linhardt leaned away in his chair, as if Caspar physically pushed him. The look on his face had Caspar instantly regret his tone. 

“Of course,” Linhardt said in that mild, disinterested tone he used when he was angry. “I forget that the Goddess, in her infinite wisdom, made you _immortal_ , as well as indestructible.”

“Lin--”

“...If the two of you are quite finished,” Lysithea cut him off. She was still standing from her seat, a map of the Gloucester territory spread in front of her and little pawns strewn across it. “Linhardt, your Seraphim is better than Dorothea’s; we need you on vanguard. And we need Caspar covering Shamir on the right flank. Can you live with that?”

When Linhardt didn’t respond, instead crossing his arms and staring sullenly at the map, she sighed in frustration. Caspar opened his mouth, not quite sure whether to defend Linhardt or reiterate his prowess, but the Professor must have decided she’d let the kids play long enough.

“I think we’ve all had enough for the day,” she said, a peace offering if Caspar had ever seen one. “Seteth, I want you and Lysithea draw up the plan in detail, as discussed so far. We’ll reconvene tomorrow morning.”

Linhardt didn’t wait for a formal dismissal, abandoning his chair with such haste he beat even Felix to the door. Caspar made to follow, but a hand grasped his arm, pulling him back into his chair. 

“Trust me on this,” Sylvain said, as Caspar swung around, ready to voice his displeasure. “You want to give him a moment.”

*

Things took a turn only a couple weeks before, after Aillel. 

Caspar took an arrow in the shoulder from Ashe, and another in his thigh. Which was good, all things considered, because a scuffle with a brute of a Rowe soldier just moments before had Caspar’s helmet rolling off into a puddle of lava. Ashe could’ve taken him out without breaking a sweat, but he chose to slow him down instead, which, in Caspar’s book, made him… redeemable? It was Ingrid who knocked the archer into the mud and forced him to capitulate, then sheepishly follow their merry little gang of misfits --plus an Alliance army-- back to Garreg Mach.

Caspar was happy with the outcome. He’d always liked Ashe, and knew how torn up he was about the death of his old man. When Professor asked his vote on the matter, he didn’t have to think twice, but--

But. 

Linhardt was so quiet, patching him up after the fight. Caspar thought he was just tired, having been denied his usual sleep schedule when marching, and spent from all the spellwork he had to perform that day. But as they collapsed into the bedrolls in their shared tent, well into the night and still so unbearably hot, Linhardt said something weird.

“Don’t ever get so far from me again.”

Caspar lifted his head off the ground, already halfway asleep. “What was that?”

“Don’t. Don’t run off where I can’t get to you.”

“We were on opposite flanks,” Caspar reminded him, Linhardt’s unusually hard tone somewhat unsettling. “I was _supposed_ to move ahead, remember? We had a map, and all.”

“He nearly killed you.”

Caspar was lost. Through the haze of exhaustion, he attempted to reason; a foolish attempt even on his best days. “That’s kind of my job, Lin. I get in close, and sometimes get hit. Marianne kept me up just fine.”

There was no response to that, and he’d assumed that Linhardt just went to sleep. 

After that, the weird silence between them only stretched out and intensified. Linhardt seemed to find any available excuses to eat his meals alone, and avoid any human --or, more precisely, Caspar-- contact whatsoever. Still, it wasn’t completely unlike Lin to close off occasionally, and whenever they ventured out to deal with the latest rash of monsters or bandits, the familiar tingle of white magic would pick Caspar up whenever he faltered.

Again, he wasn’t an idiot. He knew that this cold treatment had to do with his response in the tent being lacking, somehow, but couldn’t fathom what to do about it. Everything he said was true. The Professor trusted him to cut a path through the enemy lines, and Caspar trusted his companions to keep him alive if he got overwhelmed. He trusted them to keep Linhardt alive, too. It didn’t mean that he didn’t _prefer_ to be treated by his best friend, his magic always a comforting reminder of his presence.

But after several weeks of being passed by, and looked over, and having doors shut in his face, Linhardt arguing a moot point on his behalf was… insulting. So he lost his temper. And now the silence froze twice over, the distance between them suddenly gaping like a canyon. Sylvain’s advice was a convenient thing to blame, and so when it was their turn to spar, Caspar allowed all of his frustration and loneliness to spill over into his blows.

On horseback, Sylvain was untouchable. But on the ground, faced with Caspar’s training axe --and when the thing broke, fists-- he didn’t stand a chance.

“I yield!,” he gasped, rolling away from a punch that would likely have split his skull had it landed. “I yield, damn it!”

In the end, Felix had to intervene, reluctantly abandoning his methodical destruction of training dummies to trip Caspar up and fell him onto his back. Sylvain held his nose, bleeding profusely, as he scooted over to sit next to Caspar instead.

“I hope that made you feel better,” he complained.

“Oh, screw you,” Caspar spat, still breathing hard, both from the exertion of the fight and the unexpected fall. “I should’ve gone after him, and you stopped me.” 

Felix gave them both an inscrutable look, rolled his eyes, and stalked off. Sylvain helped Caspar haul himself up, wincing with the movement. 

“While screaming matches in a corridor can be very satisfying,” he said, removing his bracers to wipe the blood off his face with his sleeve, “I can tell you from experience that they don’t solve anything in the long run.”

“I’m not _you_ ,” Caspar scoffed. With the red mist of rage gone, he was dangerously close to feeling sorry for Sylvain, and that would be just unbearable. “C’mon, let’s get you to-- uh, who’s on infirmary duty today?,” and when Sylvain didn’t respond for a fraction of a second too long, “Oh.”

“I’ll find Mercie,” Sylvain offered, but Caspar had enough of this weird game of cat and mouse.

“No,” he said. “No, let’s go get you fixed.”

*

Linhardt was, predictably, deeply asleep when they arrived, head resting in his arms on top of Manuela’s desk. 

His hair was a mess, Caspar noticed, with an unexpected pang of guilt. Both Dorothea and Petra were usually more than happy to lend Lin a hand if Caspar didn’t get to it in time; perhaps this whole silent treatment thing wasn’t reserved exclusively for him. Maybe Linhardt was in some sort of trouble, and Caspar took it too personally after the odd conversation in Aillel. Oh, Goddess, he was such a tool.

Sylvain, whose ribs gave him hell on the trip up the stairs, looked at him with a frown. 

“Should we wake him?”

Caspar didn’t respond. 

Normally, he’d shake Linhardt awake and give him a hard time for sleeping on duty, or scoop him up and carry him to a bed somewhere. Now, he was hesitant to so much as touch his arm, something not unlike dread building up in his gut. What did he overlook? What did he run right past, this time?

It was awfully nice of Sylvain to give him all this time to think, but the man couldn’t help a groan escaping him when he shifted his weight. Linhardt’s eyes fluttered open, and he regarded them both with a tired sort of resignation. Caspar felt his face grow hot. He should never have come here.

“Sylvain got banged up in training,” he cried, cringing internally at how loud his voice was in the quiet of the infirmary. “I-- I’ll see you later!”

Strategic retreat, that what it was. He needed… he needed to think this through. He needed to figure out what was bugging Linhardt, before he barged in with unfounded accusations. Let nobody say he hadn’t learned anything from the scorpion gang incident.

He ran past Professor, her arms full of documents as she struggled to carry them up the stairs, and had an idea.

*

Linhardt left the monastery grounds so rarely, each time it was it was an event widely commented on by both their companions and the gate guards. Since Aillel, he’d gone to the ever-rebuilding town at the base of the mountain no less than four times.

Caspar hadn’t thought too much of it previously, assuming his friend was collecting ingredients or shopping for yet more books and parchment. Now, he had to wonder. Was he meeting someone? Was he receiving post he didn’t want anyone in Garreg Mach to know about? Either way, any evidence would surely be found in his room. Linhardt couldn’t keep a tidy desk to save his life, after all. 

He had spent so much time in the downstairs room, he barely registered getting in without Linhardt there as trespassing. There was a tiny, guilty voice whispering at the back of his head, but Caspar was pretty adept at ignoring second thoughts. In a way, he figured, it was Linhardt’s own fault. He should have been there to tell Caspar how bad an idea this was.

As per usual, you couldn’t see the floor for the amount of books strewn across every available surface. A half-burnt candle was resting precariously on the bedside table, and Caspar, envisioning a potential blazing inferno, moved it into a dish. It was only a couple of seconds afterwards that he realised he’d just given himself away as surely as if he had left a note, explaining that he went through Linhardt’s stuff. 

Oh well. He better make it count, then.

First, he had to shift some of the everyday debris from the desk, crockery, cutlery, several empty ink bottles and one left open to evaporate, apparently. A broken quill; which, weird, because Linhardt wasn’t prone to excitement went writing down his notes. More candle stubs. No matches, you don’t need those when you have flame literally at your fingertips. Pages and pages of notes in Linhardt’s flowing script, with what looked like Hanneman’s comments in the margins. Three massive tomes on crests, two somewhat smaller ones on mathematics… In short, nothing out of the ordinary. 

The rest of the room didn’t turn up anything of interest, either, but by the time Caspar was done with it, it looked somewhat liveable at least. Books in piles, in the order he found them. Potion bottles on shelves; empty on the left, full on the right. Clothes shoved into the closet, because he was never any good at folding anyway. He was elbows deep in the linens basket, trying to find a pillowcase not stained with ink, when a cough from the doorway froze him into place.

“Caspar,” Linhardt said, leaning on the doorframe, expression unreadable. 

Caspar, guilty as charged, dropped the bed covers back into the basket and rubbed the back of his neck. “Um,” he tried. “Finished your shift already?”

Linhardt stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. Caspar’s heart was in his throat. He hadn’t found _anything_ , he still had no idea what was wrong with his friend, and now he upset him further by going through his stuff, Goddess, what was he thinking? Why didn’t he just-- talk to Dorothea, or something? Or the Professor? Or--

“Calm down,” Linhardt sighed. He looked more exhausted than ever, eyes lined with purple, as he surveyed his room and Caspar’s handiwork. “You cleaned my room.”

“Well, I tidied up some. Look, Lin, I’m sorry--”

“Thank you.”

That brought Caspar up short. Whatever he was trying to say morphed into a mumbled ‘you’re welcome’ on the way out of his mouth, and he didn’t seem capable of looking up from his feet again. The silence was stifling, like a heavy duvet in the height of summer, and he simmered in it for a good few minutes before he couldn’t take it anymore.

“I didn’t mean I don’t need you,” he said on an exhale, the words escaping him without previous consultation with his brain. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just wanted you to worry less, okay? I like it better when it’s you, but I’m often at the front with all the-- the gross stuff, and I know you don’t like that, so isn’t it better if you--,” his voice broke slightly, and he _hated_ it, he sounded like a little boy, “--if you don’t have to watch me get sliced up? Isn’t that easier?”

Linhardt wasn’t moving, or saying anything, and Caspar felt tears prickle at the corners of his eyes. He was _not_ going to cry. The silence seemed to last forever; he could hear his own damn heartbeat, hammering away like he was hopped up on a haste spell. 

Still, Caspar didn’t dare to look up. Not until he felt a soft touch on his arm, then his face, tugging his chin up--

He’d kissed Hilda, once, back in the academy days. It was nice. It was nothing like this. This was like being set on fire-- no, Caspar knew that feeling all too well, with how many mages he’d run into on the battlefield. 

This was like stepping into a sauna after a cold day. Like drinking cold water after training. 

“I’m sorry,” he heard Linhardt say from what seemed like too far away, even as his fingers wrapped around the back of Caspar’s neck. “I thought some distance would… help me think clearer. I was wrong.”

Caspar blinked his eyes open. There was a void right under his feet, and he gripped at Linhardt’s flowy sleeves to stop himself from falling through the floor.

“Yeah,” he croaked, his throat tight. “Yeah, you were. Wrong, that is. Not anymore?”

Linhardt smiled. He was so close, Caspar could feel his breath on his face. 

“I don’t like to watch you get hurt,” Linhardt said, voice low, slowly leaning in until their foreheads touched. “But the uncertainty of not seeing you is much worse.”

There were things Caspar knew needed saying. Realities of war, and all that nonsense. How he was merely a soldier, going wherever they sent him and only hoping to return at the end of the day. How he wouldn’t make promises he couldn’t keep, not to Linhardt. He opened his mouth to say something, then remembered the night after Aillel. 

“Well,” he began, for once assembling the words _before_ spewing them out. “If I’ve got you with me, then I won’t be getting hurt, right?”

Linhardt’s shoulders shook with silent laughter, and he kissed Caspar again. And again.

In hindsight, it was probably for the best Caspar didn’t get to change the sheets.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes hello welcome to my disaster otp. I wrote majority of it months ago, reread it today, thought it wasn't too bad, and capped it off in one evening. So there might be some inconsistencies and stuff, I'm fairly sure I had bigger plans than a fluffy one shot at some point. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> Title is from Grace Petrie's 'Incompetent Love Song'. Grace Petrie is fantastic and you should all buy her albums, please and thank you.


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